Comments 2,206

Re: PlatinumGames Gains 'The Wonderful 101' Trademark From Nintendo

link3710

@Haruki_NLI Even back when that happened there were hints that W101's trademark may have been involved in that deal. It is nice to see trademarks get into less complicated licensing scenarios, makes additional games more likely.

Still... I wonder when we'll get the next Astral Chain will be? Nintendo never buys IPs (literally even all the companies they've bought have been IP free), I can't imagine they'd do that just to sit on it.

Re: Catch-Up Crew: Donkey Kong Country - "I Liked His Big Red, Er, Ribbit-Bag?"

link3710

Regarding CRTs, The DKC trilogy is absolutely one that's best played with a really good CRT filter these days. The games were clearly built to take advantage of everything CRTs could offer to squeeze out those extra bits of graphics. Even the Switch's CRT filter is far better than playing it with sharp pixels.

That goes for a good chunk of the SNES's library though. The more complicated pixel art allowed for way more art tricks in that generation.

Anyways, DKC is amazing, though not as good as DKC2 (that's one that might actually hold up against ALttP / Super Metroid, with far less... 'BS' design decisions.

Re: ICYMI: Yes, Dungeons Return In The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom

link3710

@Truegamer79 I'd say 5 for BotW and 7 for TotK. BotW has Hyrule Castle beyond the core four, and TotK has the four temples, Hyrule Castle (again), Construct Factory / Spirit Temple (basically one dungeon across two locations, similar to Spirit Temple in OOT), and the final Chasm.

While you can probably argue about Chasm / both Hyrule Castles, Spirit Temple is pretty clearly the fifth major dungeon of TotK.

Re: Poll: With 'Switch 2' Rumours Swirling, Will There Be A September Direct This Year?

link3710

@DripDropCop146 Ah yes, 3 Mario is Missings, Mario Teaches Typing, Hotel Mario, the Wand of Gamelon, Mario Party 1-8 + the mobile games, Mario Kart 1-6, 4 Mario Tennis, 4 Mario Golf, Mario DDR Mix, Super Sluggers, 5 Dr. Marios, 2 Sports Mixes, Pinball Land, Picross, 3 Paper Marios, 3 Mario and Luigi's, Super Mario RPG, Links Crossbow Training, Four Swords Adventure and more, all remastered in HD in one collection. Very likely.

Re: UK Charts: Luigi's Mansion 2 HD Starts To Slip In A Quiet Week

link3710

@traceman Wha? Based on what data? Not saying you're definitely wrong, but I also haven't seen anything but JP numbers for the remaster. As of this week JP only shows 150,591, while we know it sold over 1 mil in Japan alone on the 3DS.

Admittedly the rest of the worlds data could theoretically make up for the shortfall, but... it doesn't seem likely it's anywhere near outsold the 3DS version (yet at least)

Re: AI Generator Scraped YouTube Videos Without Permission, Including Nintendo's

link3710

@dew12333 Yeah, I'm a computer engineer, so working with these systems is actually something I do lol. I can tell you right now that the way it's taught is pretty simple:

1. Take an image / video
2. Tag it with useful keywords
3. Convert it into a series of chunks
4. Use those chunks to reinforce / weaken nodes in the algorithm.

(Okay yes this is absolutely simplified, but the core idea is this)

It's a little more complicated than tracing, but there's no learning going on. A neural net can only spit out replicas of what was fed into it, in terms of the lines and shapes. Due to the nature of the way they're programmed, there's literally nothing in it capable of understanding why the lines, shapes, and colors were chosen, an then making decisions off of that.

Instead, it just takes the inputs (Tags + a random seed value) and generates something from it. Given the same tags and the same RNG seed value, it will always produce the exact same product. In other words, it's not making artistic decisions. Which is why things like six / four fingered hands are so common.

Re: AI Generator Scraped YouTube Videos Without Permission, Including Nintendo's

link3710

@dew12333 The problem is that what they're calling 'AIs' aren't AIs. They're black box algorithms, but there's no intent or understanding within them. As they lack any sort of intelligence, they can't actually interpret other works and use them as inspiration. Instead, they're more like automated collages, taking pieces of other art wholesale and just combining them together with no rhyme or reason.

Obviously human created art is capable of being problematic too (see anytime someone starts tracing and claiming it as their own). But since anything one of these algorithms spits out is equivalent to tracing, you need permission on what you want to trace.

Re: Sonic X Shadow Generations Showcases Side-By-Side Of Old & New Stages

link3710

@Maubari I'd go a couple years further back. Honestly, even 3 & Knuckles / CD were far more story heavy than most of their contemporaries. But really Adventure in 1999 was the first one to try and go deep, even if it's not up to the quality of Adventure 2's story.

Also, I actually kind of enjoy Lost World's story... even if the game itself is mediocre at best.

Re: Random: Nintendo Interviews Splatoon's "Great Big Three" Idol Groups

link3710

As a team I had to vote for Off The Hook, but Big Man manages to just barely eke out over either individual member of that duo.

Still... final rankings?
1. Big Man
2. Marina
3. Pearl
4. Shiver
5. Marie
6. Callie
7. Frye

1. Off The Hook
2. Deep Cut
3. Squid Sisters

Not that I dislike any mind you...

@CaleBoi25
FinalFest as idols would likely have to feature each of the 3 groups pushing their own team on the announcement, instead of just Deep Cut's individual members.

Re: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Lead UI Artist Details Work On Samus' Visor And HUD

link3710

@Bizzyb Halo wouldn't adopt it for several years, COD wasn't even out yet, James Bond wouldn't that gen, MoH, Rainbow Six and SOCOM never did as far as I'm aware, Splinter Cell debuted post-prime, DOOM was on hiatus... Yeah as far as I can recall it's at least the first major FPS to do so.

EDIT: Though I will give Halo props for having a HUD that really looked like it matched the graphical style of the game prior to Prime anyways.

Re: Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake Looks Stunning In New Gameplay Footage

link3710

@PikminMarioKirby In the original, you could just choose gender (i.e. what pronouns the game used), but it didn't have any effect on the character's graphics or the story. Later remakes (I think the SNES one started it?) added a fully separate design.

No idea why the Heroine didn't make it into Smash other than maybe Sakurai deciding to focus on adding as many Hero's of different games as costumes instead of multiple versions from the same game.

Re: Soapbox: Has Nintendo Set A Precedent That 'Switch 2' Can't Hope To Match?

link3710

@sketchturner I'd argue it's unlikely it won't run them better than Steam Deck does. A crafted port designed for specific will typically perform better than a PC port with comparable hardware. And it seems unlikely to me that the Steam Deck will outperform the Switch 2 in any significant way, given what we've already found out from the shipping logs. (The Steam Deck 2 will but that's a few years out probably).

On top of that, my only experience trying to use a steam deck of a friends was finding that most games I wanted to play on it didn't actually run on it. And I'm not just talking major titles and VR, but plenty of older titles (I recall Thomas was Alone, Megaman Legacy Collection, and Persona 4 Gold were all were no-gos that stood out for being ridiculous. I didn't have a very large library to test with, but I do recall more than half weren't compatible). And one of my friends was ranting at me that Mass Effect tends to crash a lot on their steam deck, but not on PC, so they can't play it portable.

I'll admit I mostly here people complaining about steam deck's supposedly massive issues, so I'll ask, has all of that changed?

Re: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Update Now Live (Version 1.0.1), Here Are The Full Patch Notes

link3710

@Spider-Kev You clearly haven't played this game. It's a polished masterpiece, with far less bugs and glitches than the original TTYD. Outside of two of those typos (which I am glad they're fixing), I haven't encountered a single issue.

I do know about some of the softlocks they mentioned, and the conditions to trigger them are insane and require you to do things in an order that no casual player would even consider, or very heavily exploit level geometry with frame perfect movement. Not exactly stuff you can blame QA testers for missing.

In any case, my point is this release is far less buggy at launch than most GCN era games (even with the later print revisions that patched games that were frequent in the time before downloading patches), so your comment is wildly irrelevant.

Re: Soapbox: Has Nintendo Set A Precedent That 'Switch 2' Can't Hope To Match?

link3710

@sketchturner The list of PS4/XB1 era games still is huge, and PS3/360 still has a large number of notable gaps. Kingdom Hearts, FF VII Remake / Rebirth, The last few console Monster Hunters, Nier, MGS IV+, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, all the last gen Resident Evils, Shenmue, Yakuza, Street Fighter VI, KoF XIV and XV (both of which SNK has hinted are coming to the successor), etc. It's not as big a potential library this go around, but there's more likely to also be more same-gen ports as well.

On top of which, any game that only got a Cloud version (which basically kills the idea of playing it portably) or a terribly compromised port is a candidate to get a real release.

As for the first, Nintendo seems to have turned to the GCN. There are plenty of gems on there that few people have played, and a modern coat of polish could make them stand out. Luigi's Mansion, Eternal Darkness, Star Fox (Either), Prime 2, Wind Waker (also on the Wii U), FE Path of Radiance, there's still a mine for them to cash in on. Plus Woolly World and XCX on the Wii U. There's just about enough games to match the number of GCN + Wii U ports on Switch.

On top of which, Nintendo has far more third party partners and more internal studios entering this gen then when they entered the Switch era.

I don't think it'll match the sales, but I'm not sure your reasoning for why holds.

Re: Nintendo President Says Longer Game Development Cycles Are "Unavoidable"

link3710

@OldGamer999 I mean, I understand most of that, but I think it's a bit early to assume 3rd party titles will look like rubbish on the Switch 2. Almost all 3rd party games are still receiving PS4 releases, even if Nintendo doesn't dig into that power, I think 3rd party releases that are equitable to the PS4 versions is highly probable.

We already know enough about the components of the Switch 2 just from public shipping manifests (12 GB RAM, UFS 3.1 storage with hardware based decoding, and a Gimle (Odin) Tegra SoC, to know that even a seriously underclocked system where all other parts aren't upgraded from the Switch should be able to put out 3rd party titles visually on par with the base PS4.

Re: Video: Sakurai Explains The Need For Online Updates And Patches

link3710

@PikminMarioKirby Super Mario 64 did get three sets of bugfixes. The final one (1.3) did, in fact, fix the backwards long jump glitch, but it was only released in Japan. International editions only ever went as high as 1.2.

Said version also added rumble pack support and fixed some camera issues involving trees so...

Re: Here's A Closer Look At The 'Echoes' In The New Zelda Game For Switch

link3710

@nintendozach Zelda games can and have existed that aren't about a damsel (or guy even) in distress. Majora's Mask, Link's Awakening, even Hyrule Warriors. Frankly, Skyward Sword should be far more offensive to you based on its story being more focused on Zelda as a heroine. I'm not saying it's not a heavily recurring motif, but that doesn't mean every game has to feature it. Or Majora's, where one of your end goals is to rescue Tael, who's male. Or Ocarina with Darunia, or ALBW with Gully and Rosso. That already threw the gender roles out the window just as much as this game does. And who knows, maybe there will be women to rescue as well in this game?

Re: Here's A Closer Look At The 'Echoes' In The New Zelda Game For Switch

link3710

@nintendozach Ah yes, insulting gender roles by having a woman be an adventuring hero. Nintendo definitely hasn't had female protagonists since the NES era... (Coughs in Samus, Peach, Anna, Nana).

In fact, Aonuma has never made Zelda a playable character before because clearly that would be wrong. (Coughs in Spirit Tracks)

Re: Pokémon TCG Art Contest Disqualifies Select Entrants Following Accusations Of AI-Generated Submissions

link3710

@rvcolem1

  • It's fun
  • Like all TCGs cards vary in price so yes PTW technically... but most meta decks are under $100 so you're generally good (at least compared to the $500+ meta decks in most TCGs). The super expensive cards are usually not actually played in the game, they're collector's items. Obviously this can vary in practice. But in general, its the cheapest major TCG by a wide margin.
  • Yes it's called U150

Re: Retro Studios "Thrilled" To Reveal Its Work On Metroid Prime 4: Beyond

link3710

@RasandeRose This isn't true. There are a bunch of things more powerful hardware can do that isn't just upping poly counts:
Ray-tracing - Allows lighting to just work naturally, reducing development time and costs
CPU Limitations - Many games are still limited in how many enemies / allies can appear on screen. While theoretically you could downsample insane amounts on the GPU, the CPU can't gain more power by reducing resolution.
Load Speeds- The Switch's loading is bottlenecked by needing CPU to pull everything. A more modern system could have a dedicated chip for pulling data at higher rates, allowing for higher speed SD cards to actually perform better, or even a built in SSD.
DLSS - Allows the game to be developed with lower resolution textures and rendering targets while still producing a picture relatively close to true higher resolutions.

The Switch isn't yet at a place where more power is only going to slow things down to create games. There are genuine bottlenecks in the hardware that can't truly be worked around compared to the PS4 / PS5.

And being able to render at a consistent 1080p60fps isn't going to slow down development either, as long as they stay out of the 4k game (outside of DLSS). Native 4k assets are killer and one of the biggest issues in game development right now.

Re: Donkey Kong Country Returns Switch Dev Appears To Have Been Revealed

link3710

@Nua I'm sure I could find one, but I do know a lot of the staff has been seen in credits of other Nintendo games during the Switch era. I saw a master post on Twitter at some point of someone matching people up but dunno if it even still exists. Most people were either at Nintendo or Sega from what I recall, with a handful likely having left the industry.

Some examples: Hiroyuki Kabota was recently in the ToTK credits (I think he's working for Monolith Soft), Yoshihiko Maekawa was involved with Mario RPG remake, Koichi Fuzakawa is at Sega.

Not sure if anyone else knows where to find that master post tho